Social campaign by American Tamil sisters celebrate dark skin ‪#‎unfairandlovely‬

A photo series featuring two ‪‎American‬ ‎Tamil‬ sisters has inspired a new social campaign celebrating dark skin ‪#‎unfairandlovely‬

In recent weeks, three students from the University of Texas, Austin, have launched a new campaign which has become a talking point on social media around the world.

It was inspired by a project that Pax Jones, a 21-year-old black student at the University of Texas in Austin, began in December.

She created a photo series featuring stunning images of her South Asian classmates, sisters Mirusha and Yanusha Yogarajah (pictured top right).

“Our goal was to combat colourism and the under-representation of people of colour in the media. We were trying to challenge the way colourism permeates our lives,” Ms Jones told the BBC over the phone from Austin.

The series, called “Unfair & Lovely”, became a hit and inspired the hashtag #unfairandlovely – named after the hugely popular Indian skin-lightening cream Fair and Lovely.

The campaign, which asked dark-skinned people to put their photos on social media, generated lively discussions on Twitter and Facebook and saw nearly 1,000 people posting their photos on Instagram.